


Ragged Like the Bone

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are no such things as psychics.</p><p>If he says it often enough, it will be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ragged Like the Bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [platina (Lydia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lydia/gifts).



> AU where Patrick Jane is an actual telepath

_There are no such things as psychics._

If he says it often enough it will be true. He will believe it. This is called hypnosis, and that is real, and that is useful. He uses it all the time. It works. It really works. It does.

It works because most times the thoughts that aren't his own are hazy and sluggish like the wide dark creeks of his childhood when he was a boy and needed to get away from the crowing, roaring, whispering inside his head. His daddy taught him how to hypnotize because he knew. Came from momma, that did. That's what daddy said. The loudness came from momma, like the golden curls and big blue eyes. Who would ever think the little boy knew who among them was the one with murder in their hearts or on their hands?

When Patrick fell in love with Angie he did not let her thoughts spill out in his mind but he did revel in the swift wash of them, which flickered, sharp and good, which in his mind smelled like mossy rocks and the thick shade beneath tall pines. A body could lie down and take a long nap on Angie's thoughts, they felt so good, they wrapped so tight around him.

Then Red John.

_His daughter._

He had never felt the way a lover's mind could be wrenched from his, when he walked into that house and his heart was quiet and his mind was still, when he walked into that room and.

Ragged like the bone. 

Red John's thoughts are like a long walk through tunnels steeped in groundwater and frost and the whisper of something abandoned but not quiet. Here are the footsteps. Here is an echo. It is not an echo but someone behind you. 

He thinks Red John knows.

The way he is drawn inside the head of another. It creeps around him. Like his body is the lover's again. He is standing in the tunnel smelling cinderblock dust and darkness. The single light disappears and there is water in the deep. The voices bounce across. He wants the sun. He wants the light. He aches for the expanse of golden grass, the dust, the fairgrounds, barefoot, running, wild.

Red John lays hands on his body and the single voice of many voices comes out of the black tunnel. The light goes out.


End file.
